Back In The USA: the Later Years Before 911, America was a different place. The dirty deals, the politics, the police state was not in the open like it is now. Then it was quiet, but methodical. If you crossed the line, the power brokers had ways of shutting you up. You simply got blacklisted and you could not do a thing. End of the Beginning (I was crafty in those days. I had the art of double-speak, and I stepped on their toes often and made them look stupid and rediculous as indeed they were. I used the medium of talk radio and I really did a number on them, before they finished me off.) When the Berlin Wall fell in Germany, in suburban Chicago walls were going up all over. Rarely in history had a war like the Cold War ended without firing a shot, and rarely had a country like Germany been re-united without blood spilled. The Russians left Germany, as many former Russian republics left Russia. The Warsaw pact dissolved. American forces stayed, and so did NATO. Meanwhile back in Chicago, it now cost 35,000 dollars a year to imprison an unemployed welfare recipient who stole a car. The lawyer to defend and prosecute him was not cheap either. Drug sales were brisk on many city streets, and sometimes the cops made a few raids when the payoff money did not arrive. In La Grange Park, the Italian mob was running its prostitute and strip bar across from the police station and municiple building. That was Chicago as was most of America. One face to the outside showing all was well and good and working as it should. The real deal was how things really worked underneath. As long as you were on the outside and did not know too much, and you did not make any waves you were safe. That would change shortly. Two years later I was sitting in a bar packed with patrons watching a video game on television called the Gulf War. One of the local cops I had gone to school with and known for years addressed me off duty, "What do you think about the war?" Answering him honestly was a big mistake, "I think Sadam was set up to take a fall," I said. Then I went on about what I had read in the newspapers; how our embassy had told him the U.S.A. had no security interest in the area, and the exchange that had taken place between American embassy staff and Iraq as was reported in the papers. He kind of nodded and agreed. His true feelings would come out later. In the USA there are many people under surveillance: those who have done their prison time are on probation. This can last years, and these people must report to a probation officer and their freedoms are limited even after they have paid for their crimes. In this category the USA has at any one time over 2,000,000 people behind prison and another 1,400,000 on probation at any one time. This revolving door never stops and the numbers are increasing. When you consider that the legal profession and law enforcement are the largest employers and the highest paid professions in the USA, there is only one incentive for this industry and that is to keep it growing. People who the government feels are a threat are also watched. Sometimes the "watching" is just the government waiting for an opportunity to plant or incite an incident to get that person out of the way. In a chance encounter, I met one of these government "watched" persons, and as far as the government was concerned,being in contact was more than enough to put you into the "watched category." to be continued... Stumble It!

Back In The USA: the Later Years Before 911, America was a different place. The dirty deals, the politics, the police state was not in the open like it is now. Then it was quiet, but methodical. If you crossed the line, the power brokers had ways of shutting you up. You simply got blacklisted and you could not do a thing. End of the Beginning (I was crafty in those days. I had the art of double-speak, and I stepped on their toes often and made them look stupid and rediculous as indeed they were. I used the medium of talk radio and I really did a number on them, before they finished me off.) When the Berlin Wall fell in Germany, in suburban Chicago walls were going up all over. Rarely in history had a war like the Cold War ended without firing a shot, and rarely had a country like Germany been re-united without blood spilled. The Russians left Germany, as many former Russian republics left Russia. The Warsaw pact dissolved. American forces stayed, and so did NATO. Meanwhile back in Chicago, it now cost 35,000 dollars a year to imprison an unemployed welfare recipient who stole a car. The lawyer to defend and prosecute him was not cheap either. Drug sales were brisk on many city streets, and sometimes the cops made a few raids when the payoff money did not arrive. In La Grange Park, the Italian mob was running its prostitute and strip bar across from the police station and municiple building. That was Chicago as was most of America. One face to the outside showing all was well and good and working as it should. The real deal was how things really worked underneath. As long as you were on the outside and did not know too much, and you did not make any waves you were safe. That would change shortly. Two years later I was sitting in a bar packed with patrons watching a video game on television called the Gulf War. One of the local cops I had gone to school with and known for years addressed me off duty, "What do you think about the war?" Answering him honestly was a big mistake, "I think Sadam was set up to take a fall," I said. Then I went on about what I had read in the newspapers; how our embassy had told him the U.S.A. had no security interest in the area, and the exchange that had taken place between American embassy staff and Iraq as was reported in the papers. He kind of nodded and agreed. His true feelings would come out later. In the USA there are many people under surveillance: those who have done their prison time are on probation. This can last years, and these people must report to a probation officer and their freedoms are limited even after they have paid for their crimes. In this category the USA has at any one time over 2,000,000 people behind prison and another 1,400,000 on probation at any one time. This revolving door never stops and the numbers are increasing. When you consider that the legal profession and law enforcement are the largest employers and the highest paid professions in the USA, there is only one incentive for this industry and that is to keep it growing. People who the government feels are a threat are also watched. Sometimes the "watching" is just the government waiting for an opportunity to plant or incite an incident to get that person out of the way. In a chance encounter, I met one of these government "watched" persons, and as far as the government was concerned,being in contact was more than enough to put you into the "watched category." to be continued...